John Kaiser
Why aren’t we seeing church multiplication spread rapidly in Western cultures the way it does in some parts of Asia and the Global South?
All we can do from this side of heaven is guess. At I have read and pondered the wisdom of “Barney” on this matter and find his points of explanation to be credible. But I do have one thought to add.
Barney points to materialism as a hindrance to the acceptance of the gospel in western lands. No doubt that is a factor. Jesus himself commented on the difficulty that a rich person has in entering the Kingdom. Who needs the Kingdom when you’ve got nice little empire of your own? However, there is another side of this factor that Barney does not mention. It is the side that bothers me more than the effect of materialism on the receptivity of non-Christians to Jesus. It is the effect of materialism on the Christians who need to be doing and funding the church planting to reach those non-Christians.
In the Parable of the Soils, Jesus spoke about thorny ground where the cares of the world choke out the fruitfulness of the plant. In terms of church planting, I’m afraid that choking is more about us than the people we are trying to reach. Sometimes it seems like the more we have the less we’re willing to give. Does paying for pastors and buildings really pose the main obstacle to rapid church planting in the West? I don’t see how. Think about it this way: No matter what the standard or cost of living may be, it would only take ten tithing families to support a full-time pastor at the average income of those families. Add the tithe of another five or ten families, and you can easily fund an appropriate rental or purchase to keep those fifteen or twenty families out of the rain. I’m not advocating small churches here, simply pointing out how few of us it would take to get the job done if we actually wanted to.
What we have is a heart problem. Jesus said where our treasure is, that’s where our heart is too. Street translation: Show me the money. Don’t get the idea that I think we put too much money into our own churches and not enough into new church planting. I think we put too little money into both. Of course, we wouldn’t want to be too generous with either the house of God or the mission of God, would we? It’s not as if money just falls from the sky after all. Not unless God opens the windows of heaven . . . (Malachi 3:10)
